What I’m Not Playing This Week: Hardcore Parkour!

If you’ve been following the news lately, there’s been a lot of coverage for Splash Damage’s game Brink. The first person shooter has had a considerable amount of buzz surrounding it since PAX East, with many hailing it to be the next great multiplayer experience on both consoles and PC.

And I’ll probably wait until a Steam sale to purchase it.

I’ve absolutely loved everything I’ve heard and seen about Brink. People have been equating it to an FPS that mixes the class-based arcade shooter elements of Team Fortress 2 with the smooth flowing parkour mechanics of Mirror’s Edge. Hey, I like arcadey shooters, and I love Team Fortress 2. Parkour, I absolutely adore, as it’s the best “looks amazing when done by professionals but ridiculously laughable when attempted by normal folk” sport I’ve encountered.

Here’s the thing though; in just a week after Brink comes out, Rockstar’s latest masterpiece LA Noire is dropping. Bethesda tried to avoid that behemoth by releasing Brink a week earlier, but it still might not be enough. Beyond the fact that I simply won’t have enough money to purchase both titles, I absolutely know that once LA Noire comes around, I’ll completely ditch Brink like an overweight redheaded stepchild with leprosy. Additionally, Brink seems to be a largely multiplayer-oriented experience and, much like others, I have a PS3. You have to wonder how badly Brink is going to suffer thanks to this PSN outage.

The saddest part is I know I’m not the only one that thinks this way; a considerable amount of my friends are indeed saving their money for Rockstar’s opus seven days later. It’s just a terrible window to release any sort of IP, especially one that looks like it deserves the time and money. It’s a shame, but ’tis life, I suppose.

Allen is an utter whore of a gamer; he's completely open-minded to all games, be they AAA blockbusters or $5 casual children's games. His focus is on indie games specifically, valuing gameplay and ingenuity over sparkly visuals and ridiculous gimmicks. When he's not geeking out over the newest art game, he's out toning his sexy, sculpted shoulders while surfing epic 1.5ft waves, or having a good time with local, high-gravity microbrews.